Monday, February 18, 2008

The past few months I have been so concerned about the youth in the Scholarship Program. It seems that so many students are eager to enter preschool and go to grade school; but, when they get to high school, so few of them are able, or willing, to finish. I worried and wondered if there was something more that we could do here at Sonshine Center to help them make it. Then I read an article which had these staggering statistics:

Philippine Department of Education records show that in every 100 pupils that enter first grade, only sixty-six will finish elementary school. Of that sixty-six, only fifty-eight will enroll in high school, and then only forty-three will graduate, and out of this, only fourteen will finish college.

I wanted to compare these statistics with the dropout rates in the United States. According to the statistics website of the U.S. Department of Education, 10.9% of 16-24 year olds were high school dropouts in the year 2000.

So, in the U.S. about 10% of children drop out of high school as compared to the Philippines where 34% of students dropout in elementary level and 57% drop out in high school.

Through the Sonshine Center Scholarship Program, we are hoping to change these statistics one child at a time.